With liberals howling that Gore won the popular vote and that the
Republicans stole the election in Florida, it’s a good idea to go back
to November 1992 and review what happened in that election. Bill
Clinton won the election by winning 370 electoral votes in 34 states,
but he received only 43 percent of the popular vote. Which means that
57 percent of the voters did not want Clinton as president. That was
clearly a massive repudiation of the Democrat Party and the liberal
philosophy of government it stands for. In other words, the most
moderate of Democrats, as Clinton was then portrayed, could not muster
more than 43 percent of the popular vote. Only a split in the
conservative vote permitted the Democrats to win the White House.

There is no doubt that those who voted for Perot were more
conservative than liberal. Bush lost because he made a fatal mistake by
repudiating his “no new taxes” campaign promise. In fact, the only time
Bush sounded like a real conservative was when he made his famous “read
my lips” speech written by conservative firebrand Peggy Noonan.
Conservatives had hoped that Bush had undergone a conversion and really
believed in what he was saying. But when he surrendered to liberal
congressional pressure and agreed to raise taxes, conservatives felt
betrayed and humiliated.

Conservatives had wanted Bush to stand up to the liberals in the way
that he had stood up against Saddam Hussein. But he refused to do so,
and thus lost the support of many conservatives. Vice President Dan
Quayle made it clear that he believed the Bush tax increase was
responsible for the prolonged recession. In other words, Bush not only
reneged on his pledge of no new taxes, but helped bring about the very
recession that became his undoing.

What the new president-elect, George W. Bush, knows is that if he
doesn’t push through his tax cut, we will have a recession! And that is
why the Democrats are against it. They want a recession so that they
can make a strong comeback in 2002 on the back of a Dubya recession.

Incidentally, in 1992 Clinton won a majority of votes in only two
states, Arkansas and Maryland, and also in the District of Columbia. In
California he got 46 percent, while Bush/Perot got 53 percent. Even in
Tennessee, with Gore on the ticket, Clinton got 47 percent of the vote,
Bush/Perot 52 percent. Clinton got less than 45 percent of the vote in
35 states, yet he picked up their electoral votes. In reality, the
election of 1992 was a conservative popular landslide but a liberal
victory, all because of the split in the conservative vote.

In 1992, Perot was a formidable factor. He managed to garner 20
percent or more of the popular vote in 30 states! He got 27 percent in
Alaska, 24 percent in Arizona, 2l percent in California, 27 percent in
Idaho, 30 percent in Maine, and so on. Ralph Nader hardly got 5 percent
anywhere in this last election.

Back in 1992, Don Feder, columnist for the Boston Herald, gave his
own evaluation of conservative disillusionment with Bush, which led to
his defeat. He wrote,

After winning as a conservative in 1988, Bush extended an olive
branch to his enemies and his middle finger to his erstwhile allies. He
signed the quota bill, and all the racial con men were for him this
year, weren’t they? He initialed the Clean Air Act, and all the
environmental wackos were in his corner, weren’t they? He signed the
Hate Crimes Bill and invited homosexual activists to the White House for
the signing, and that crowd clambered aboard his reelection bandwagon,
didn’t they?

And what did he do for his core constituency from 1988? For
evangelicals, he appointed John Frohmayer head of the National Endowment
for the Arts and stuck with him through Mapplethorpe and “Piss Christ.”
His first Supreme Court appointment voted to uphold Roe v. Wade and
declare a graduation invocation a violation of the First Amendment.

For fiscal conservatives, he raised taxes, rolled over for
congressional spending, re-regulated and gave us the greatest
bureaucratic expansion of all time.

It is obvious that George W. is not about to make the mistakes
his father made. He has 100 days to prove that he has a conservative
vision and the guts to stand up to the liberals who will keep
questioning his legitimacy. The county-by-county map of the election
results showed Bush enjoying a clean sweep across the entire nation,
with Democrat islands of strength concentrated in the large cities on
both coasts.

Of course, black voters in these concentrated areas feel cheated
because, despite all their efforts at a massive turnout, they lost by a
small number of votes in Florida. They were promised the moon if they
voted, but what they got is George W. Bush.

The Democrats are pinning their hopes to recapture Congress on the
election in 2002. They will do all in their power to sabotage the Bush
presidency. The tax cut will be the main battlefield, and we shall see
in that battle whether or not George W. has what it takes to quash his
liberal enemies and deliver on his campaign promises.